The subject matter discussed in the background section should not be assumed to be prior art merely as a result of its mention in the background section. Similarly, a problem mentioned in the background section or associated with the subject matter of the background section should not be assumed to have been previously recognized in the prior art. The subject matter in the background section merely represents different approaches, which in and of themselves may also be inventions.
Open Authorization (OAuth) is an open standard for providing third party access to a resource. OAuth provides a method for clients to access server resources on behalf of a resource owner (such as a different client or an end-user). OAuth provides a process for end-users to authorize third-party access to the end-user's server resources, without sharing the end-user's credentials (typically, a username and password pair), by using user-agent redirections. OAuth allows users to hand out tokens instead of credentials to their data hosted by a given service provider. Each token may grant access to a specific site for specific resources and for a defined duration, which allows a user to grant a third-party site access to their information stored with another service provider, without sharing their access permissions or the full extent of their data.
The widespread use of the Internet, as well as the globalization of business opportunities have presented the need to provide information sharing and controlled access between network resources. Accordingly, the present application recognizes that it may be desirable to provide techniques for extending the flow of authentication to the storage available with current browsers, in order to better secure information used for accessing and sharing network resources.